In this interview with FRED ITUA, the pastor-cum-politician said that if President Goodluck is re-elected in 2015, Northerners would crawl to survive in this country.
He also spoke on the political crisis in Adamawa State, the chances of APC in the North-East and the economy of the North.
Excerpts.
Few weeks to Adamawa State governorship election, what is APC’s selling point?
We are going to get a good candidate. The party is going to get a good candidate that is young, vibrant and tested as a performer. That is our goal and we have such people in abundance in our party. Adamawa has always been an APC state from day one. If you look at the statistics of 2012 elections, PDP defeated APC with only 60,000 votes. CPC came third with about 100,000 votes. Imagine, when you combine their strength, it will exceed that of PDP. Murtala Nyako’s defection to APC also added value. As it is, APC has about 75 per cent of winning elections in Adamawa State.
The impeachment process has made people angry in the state. They just trampled on the rules and laws of the land to remove Nyako. Everybody is waiting for this election to pay them back.
Recall that the 2011 governorship candidates of CPC and ACN have both left APC. Has that not affected the fortunes of the party in Adamawa?
Let me tell you what happened. Gundiri of ACN was more relevant to our cause. By the time he was leaving, he left alone. I will tell you why. The national deputy chairman of ACN then was from our state. He did not leave with Gundiri.
Nuhu Ribadu, who was the presidential candidate of ACN, did not leave with him as well. The only person, who left with him, was the former chairman of the party, one remote and illiterate man.
Buba Marwa, as you know, is my friend. He came and joined us in CPC. He got the ticket. Long before he left for PDP, his structure did not join APC. He instructed them to return to PDP. He was hoping things would be better for him there. Maybe their cooks and drivers defected with them.
It appears Marwa might get the PDP ticket. How do you see his candidacy against APC’s in Adamawa?
Marwa is my friend. I do not know much about the workings of the PDP. I wonder where you get your figures that say Marwa is going to win. I understand that he has declared. I also understand one of the frontline career contestants has taken the PDP to court that whoever has not spent two years in the party cannot contest. I do know if that is true because I am not a member of the PDP. But the stakeholders of PDP in Adamawa have held a meeting and agreed that they will not allow anyone who has not spent two years in the party to get any ticket. Another thing is that Marwa is not the only aspirant. He went back to the PDP, a house that is already full.
Gundiri is there and I have seen his posters. Godson to Professor Jibril Aminu has also indicated interest. I have seen his posters. I am aware that there is a deal between the PDP chairman and President Goodluck Jonathan to give the ticket to his son. There are thousands and thousands of PDP heavyweights who think it is their turn to become governor. That is why they were so unable to be patient and they had to remove Nyako. I think PDP will self-destruct in the process of this nomination.
With the take-over of the state by the PDP, don’t you think that will affect the chances of APC in the state?
It will affect our chances, but positively. Let me tell you the truth. I do not see how anybody from the North-East today can vote for the PDP. This insurgency thing is not just about Boko Haram killing our people. All our rural communities are affected. Nobody goes to the farm now because of fear of being kidnapped. They are so angry becuase the Federal Government has been unable to do anything. During this next dry season, our people will be so impoverished. No farm produce or anything to sell. Our children are not going to school in the rural areas because their parents are afraid that they will be kidnapped. All the schools have been shut. I do not see how a people that have been traumatised like this will turn round to vote for this government. Another thing is that Nyako was a very amiable person. The people are so angry at the way he was humiliated out of office. It is just that we are a peaceful people and we are under state of occupation by the military. So, our people were denied the opportunity to protest. Come this election, it is payback time for the PDP.
Some stakeholders from Adamawa have spoken about underdevelopment in the state during Nyako’s government. Does that speak well of the APC as a party?
If you want to talk about underdevelopment of Adamawa State, we really have to put it at the doorstep of the PDP. Nyako was a PDP governor for over six years. The little he has been able to do was done when he joined APC. He was able to imbibe the culture of APC, which abhors looting. There is no sharing of the commonwealth in APC. That was why he was able to do what he did. Anybody who tells you that is lying. The state House of Assembly that removed Nyako in March this year passed a vote of confidence in him. They had started seeing the transformation as a result of his defection to the APC. You have to distinguish between the government and the process that removed him. If you were an armed robber, for example, the policeman is not allowed to execute you just because you were caught in the process. You should allow due process to take its course. People were so desperate to remove Nyako and they did not care at all whether they were obeying the law or not. You listened to the acting governor when he paid a courtesy call on the PDP headquarters. He said: “I have recovered our mandate.” That was their game. Just to remove Nyako and the speaker had thus delivered. They removed him with the connivance of a corrupt judiciary. The same acting Chief Justice who said they must serve Nyako personally saw the ‘light’ a few days later and constituted a panel without vacating his own order. Nyako was impeached without being given an opportunity to defend himself. They had removed him and that is the truth. In another three months, we will recover our mandate.
Some PDP members have alleged that Boko Haram is brainchild of the APC. How would you react to this?
I am from the North-East and I grew up in Borno State. I am familiar with all the six states in the region. With due respect to President Goodluck Jonathan, Boko Haram did not start during the time of the president. That is the truth. Boko Haram started manifesting its evil inclination during the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s government and that was a PDP government. Senator Ali Modu Sherif was the governor then. During Olusegun Obasanjo, it was there. It became full blown during Yar-Adua-Jonathan period. Boko Haram was created, nurtured and matured under the PDP government. Rumours associating one individual with Boko Haram have always centred around one prominent mole planted in the APC.
He was an agent the PDP was hoping would destabilise the merger of APC. He could not do that. He tried with the interim government and failed. He also tried sabotaging the convention, but failed. Now he has returned home to PDP. The person credited with the creation of Boko Haram has returned to PDP. If you speak to every brave and bold northerner, they will tell you that Boko Haram is a creation of the PDP. They created it in order to decimate the voters’ population on the North-East. They know that the region is 100 per cent APC. They are doing it so massively.
Today, Boko Haram will kill 300 and the next day, the military will kill 50. Forces of army and Boko Haram are decimating voting population in the region. They have occupied the land so that the people will not be able to vote. We have reasons to believe that the biggest beneficiary of Boko Haram and the destabilisation of the North-East is the PDP. They are the major beneficiary.
Boko Haram was sponsored to initially get sympathy for President Jonathan. Now, it has backfired. Let me tell you this. I am a Christian and pastor. In 2012, the campaign was that we should vote for Jonathan because he is a Christian. In the churches, nobody wanted to hear anything about a Muslim president. They did not vote for Buhari. They voted for Jonathan who is a Christian. I am a Christian and let me tell you this, my church service starts by 9 am and it is just 20 minutes drive from my house. Now, it takes me at least one hour because of road blocks. My children and wife have to step down for soldiers to search their bags whether they have guns or not. And this was the same Christian we voted for. He has made church services impossible for us. He has made economic survival impossible. As a person, we have not seen jobs created for more than two years. They do not award contracts. They withdraw money from the CBN or from NNPC and they share it. The economy has collapsed. This Christian president has killed Christianity. Forget the fact that he is going on church tourism. We are aware that he has destroyed the economy of the North. I do not know about the South, but in the North, we are so impoverished. If Jonathan returns in 2015, every northerner will have to be crawling to survive.
At some point, kidnapping ruled in the South-East and South-South. The governors and people of the area rose up against it. Today, the situation is better. Why is the North not doing same to assist the government?
Anybody blaming northern governors of not doing enough is mischievous, stupid or naive. Let me tell you. The whole of the budget of Northeastern states go into security. The Federal Government does nothing. All the Hilux buses used by security agents in the region are bought by the governors. They also pay them allowances. That is part of our problem. State governors do not control the police or the military. When you have a hostile government that is, a situation that a party chairman in the state can give orders to the military. When Nyako was being impeached. All the members of the panel had three soldiers guarding them. Meanwhile, there was no security around Nyako’s house except his orderly.
Insurgency is not about kidnapping. We are talking about an attack of over 200 people with about 25 vehicles. They pass through the town and destroy military aircraft. What can the governors do? Will they collect he guns from them as they are shooting?
But these Boko Haram members are children of people in the region?
You are right. But they are being sponsored by the PDP. We know them. Do you know that the Chief of Defence Staff is from Adamawa State? Do you know that his local government is just 20 kilometres from my own? The only contribution he has made is to oppress the people. Whenever he comes to Adamawa State, suddenly you see military planes and choppers everywhere. That is how you know that he is in town. Before the advent of Boko Haram, I used to leave Kaduna by 6 in the morning and got to my village in Adamawa by 2 pm. Now, I leave by 6 am and get there 10 pm because of roadblocks. They are doing nothing. They just want to create tension. This government is out to destroy us.
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